Voices in a Vacuum

If I opened my mouth to speak
Would it scream like blood
Or whisper, like tears?

What could it say?
The world is a vacuum,
It eats sound,
Swallows it whole,
And after it digests
The air and the ashes,
It is empty.

We mouth syllables
As if breathing,
Inhaling and
Exhaling silence,
And maybe one day,
When our lips turn dry,
And the lip-readers turn away,
We will finally have the leisure
To listen.

Tonight

This is where it ends.

The violins are playing slow tonight,
With their trembling bows dipped low - a dying dance -
Grasped in closed fists - do they want peace now? -
And poised under chins held high
There is nowhere to go
But down.

There are cries for help, for
A buoy, a plank, a splinter;
Something,
Anything,
To hold onto -

As the silver anchor
The legs thought to chain to themselves
Turns into stone, dull as ash
Under the night sky,
And they begin to sink into the water,
The same water,
That feet once walked on.

What a sight -
The flailing arms, wild like fire,
Soon grow slow, limp from the cold,
And then they are still,
Raised in surrender.
The half-empty boats leave -
why should they turn back? -
Carrying only bodies,
Ones like those that they are
Leaving behind;
Those that lie,
Drifting with the current,
Over the sea
Tonight.